From Enemy's Daughter to Expectant Bride Read Free Page A

individuality, had turned them into inhuman weapons to be pointed wherever they pleased.
    Once they’d become trusted and depended on, they’d been granted more autonomy, until that laxness had allowed them to execute their escape.
    When they’d finally broken out, they’d gone deep underground, using their combined covert expertise to forge new identities....
    “Reminiscing?”
    Richard, his onetime handler, always read him with uncanny accuracy. It was how he’d found Rafael and the others after they’d escaped—by tracing him.
    His brothers’ handlers had thankfully had no insight into their true nature. But since Richard had been assigned to him when he’d been twelve, an unbreakable bond had developed between them. Richard, ice-cold and implicitly trusted by the Organization, had hidden it perfectly. But there’d been no hiding anything from his brothers. Especially from Phantom and Cypher. Those two saw
everything.
And seeing his growing rapport with Richard had made them more apprehensive by the day. Their trepidation had proved well-founded when Richard had found them.
    They’d distrusted Richard as totally as Rafael trusted him, considered him one of their enslavers. Their decision had been unanimous. Richard had to die.
    Rafael hadn’t known whom to fear for more. Richard was the most lethal operative the Organization had ever had and certainly capable of wiping them all out. There’d been only one way he could avert that catastrophic situation.
    He’d declared he’d stake his life on both sides, so if there was any killing, they had to kill him, too. Thankfully, they’d trusted him and his judgment implicitly, and it had been enough to make them all back down.
    Yet even after he’d proved their escape plans wouldn’t have worked without Richard’s covert help, they’d still suspected Richard’s motives. It had taken proof that Richard had been a hostage of the Organization himself for them to believe that he wanted to bring them down, too.
    It had still taken his brothers ages to warm up to Richard. Never in Numair’s case. Rafael remained the link between them, since he didn’t relish tearing Richard and Numair’s fangs out of each other’s flesh.
    Those two had never had a truce, not even while they’d collated their unique skills to guide their brotherhood into building their joint enterprise. The one thing they’d ever agreed on was the name of their business—the name they’d given their prison, where they and their brotherhood had been forged. And so Black Castle Enterprises had been born.
    Their business now spanned the world, with each becoming a billionaire in his own right. Each was also on a personal quest. Some searching for the family they’d been taken from, others for the heritage they’d been stripped of, some for a new purpose in life. But beyond planning the Organization’s downfall to save other children from their same fate, they had one more quest in common. Investigating how they’d ended up in the hands of the Organization.
    Rafael had recently found out exactly how.
    “Ferreira is down there?”
    Richard’s question brought him out of his musings. “Of course.”
    “So when will you put the man out of his misery?”
    Rafael glanced fondly at his friend. “I wouldn’t put it past you to mean that literally.”
    Richard gave him his patented predatory smile. “Oh, no. I think your plan is a much worse fate. I couldn’t have thought of a more diabolical one.”
    “High praise from the man who puts 007 to shame.”
    Not one for false modesty, Richard only said, “You know I’m a fan of subtle and protracted torture.”
    Indeed. And his impending torment of Ferreira would have an abundance of both elements. Disgracing him and oh-so-gradually stripping him of his wealth would only be the beginning.
    “Your plot is far more effective than putting a bullet in his brain. I just wish you’d get on with it.”
    “So you no longer disapprove of my direct